Columbia University Partners

The work with our Columbia Partners is two-fold. We promote, support and connect the work of our partners to bring greater awareness and connectivity to the criminal justice and incarceration related work happening across the university, to both the Columbia community and the community at large. We also collaborate with our Columbia Partners on a wide number of projects and events.

Center for Institutional and Social Change
The Center’s over-arching aim is to develop knowledge and practice that enables ongoing change needed for (1) individuals and groups to participate fully and thrive within institutions and communities; (2) institutions to take up their responsibilities to the larger society; and (3) policymakers to create contexts that facilitate full participation. The Center builds the capacity of networks, institutions and individuals to understand the multi-level systems that limit access and full participation, and to identify strategies and leverage points for catalyzing and sustaining change.

Center for the Study of Ethnicity and RaceFounded in 1999, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) at Columbia University is a vibrant teaching, research, and public engagement space. The Center’s mission is to support and promote the most innovative thinking about race, ethnicity, indigeneity and other categories of difference to better understand their role and impact in modern societies. What makes CSER unique is its attention to the comparative study of racial and ethnic categories in the production of social identities, power relations, and forms of knowledge in a multiplicity of contexts, including the arts, social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities.

The Center for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy (C-RRED)
The Center on Race, Religion and Economic Democracy is an Institute at Union Theological Seminary (UTS). As part of a tradition of national and global justice making, UTS is a place of scholarship on religion as a force for addressing oppressive structures and practices in society and promoting collective action for social transformation. Since 1863, Union has developed leaders who have played important roles in social movements for racial justice, gender justice, LGBTQ justice, workers’ rights, eradicating poverty, peace work, ecological sustainability and more. The C-RRED will draw upon these resources and bring to bear relationships with religious leaders, other scholars and community organizers across sectors to engage in a robust theological inquiry. This inquiry is one that is not only connected to and informed by organizing and activism for democratic action, but also able to move into action.

Center for the Study of Law and Culture
The mission of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia University (CSLC) is to facilitate interdisciplinary study, research, and scholarship on the intersections of law and culture. Starting from the twin premises that law is a cultural form and that culture carries the regulative force of legal practices and norms, the CSLC seeks to advance a wide range of work in law and culture studies. Embracing an expansive definition of culture as a concept whose boundaries range from the aesthetic to the political, the CSLC supports projects that understand law in a strict institutional or positivist sense, as well as those that approach law more generally as a regime for ordering social life, constructing cultural meaning, and shaping group and individual identities.

Criminal Justice Initiative: Supporting Women Children and Communities
The Criminal Justice Initiative: Supporting Children, Families and Communities (CJI), , was created in the fall of 2009 to address the societal impacts of the unprecedented numbers of people incarcerated during the past three decades, many of whom also face significant challenges upon returning home. This group was instrumental in creating a larger campus wide Criminal Justice Initiative at Columbia University.

The Heyman Center Public Humanities Initiative Established in 2014, The Heyman Center for the Humanities Public Humanities Initiative fosters and enhances community engagement with the humanities at Columbia and university engagement with Columbia’s diverse neighboring communities. Often collaborating with other Columbia centers and institutes, with local educational and cultural institutions, and with community organizations, it sponsors a wide range of programming, service, and research activities intended to interest and include audiences beyond the university.

Institute for Urban and Minority Education
The Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) was created in 1973 to serve the interests of those who are often hidden, disregarded, or underestimated. Our mission is to use research and demonstration to show the most promising practices in schools and out-of-school settings where youth are learning powerfully and feeling good about themselves while doing so. We are also interested in rethinking the way we do research and the way that we often perceive of populations being researched in urban education. Through work with university based researchers, classroom teachers, students, parents, community advocates and elected officials we hope to create networks committed to the relentless pursuit of educational excellence. Our youth, their families and their communities deserve nothing less.

Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS)
The Institute for Research in African-American Studies of Columbia University, founded in July 1993 by Dr. Manning Marable, is an academic resource center. The purposes and activities of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies are grounded within the best scholarship of the black intellectual tradition. The Institute has a rich tradition of scholarship which capitalizes upon our unique location in New York City, especially the dynamic community of Harlem. Currently, IRAAS engages in a broad program of research and teaching that attends to the diversity of black experiences in the global diaspora.

Mass Incarceration and Public Health Initiative at MSPH
Today, the Mailman School of Public Health is recognized as a thought leader addressing critical public health issues ranging from emerging infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment to urban health and health disparities, and from the impact of exposure to pollutants on children’s health to the implications and economic impact of health policy decisions. The Mailman School is committed to knowledge creation, the translation of science for impact, and the education of the next generation of public health leader

Social Intervention Group
SIG advances evidence-based, sustainable solutions to HIV, substance use, violence, trauma and other co-occurring issues affecting vulnerable populations through rigorous research, education, training, policy and community partnerships. Over the past few years, The Social Intervention group has both completed and is still actively involved with several studies regarding public health concerns for formerly incarcerated populations.

Youth, Media, and Educational Justice
Youth, Media, and Educational Justice is a joint initiative between Teachers College, Columbia University and the New York County/Manhattan Family Court. This multi-faceted project aims to provide a participatory approach to the study and support of the educational experiences of adolescents in foster care and juvenile justice in New York City.

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